WORLD HISTORY AND FACTS

Executions in Berlin's Plötzensee prison. Plötzensee prison in Berlin was designed by architect, Ludwig Alexander Herrmann, and was constructed between 1869 and 1879 to serve as the new state prison. It occupied a plot of 62 acres with a six meter high perimeter wall.  Within the walls were five three story prison buildings which were originally designed to hold 1,400 prisoners. These buildings, together with the workshops, other smaller buildings and a church, were separated by open courtyards creating a totally self-contained environment for the inmates.  It can still be visited and there is a memorial centre to those who died there. In the years 1928 to 1932, the number of executions in the whole of Germany had dropped to two or three a year but with the rise of the National Socialist party in 1933, there was a sudden increase in the application of the death penalty.  Before 1933, only murder and high treason were capital crimes and in Berlin, beheading (with the axe) was the on